


City of Ruins

by inlovewithnight



Category: Homicide: Life on the Street
Genre: Futurefic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-16
Updated: 2009-11-16
Packaged: 2017-10-03 03:30:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight





	City of Ruins

_Now the sweet bells of mercy drift through the evening trees  
Young men on the corner like scattered leaves,  
The boarded up windows, the empty streets  
While my brother's down on his knees  
My city of ruins_ ("My City of Ruins," Bruce Springsteen)

It's Monday morning, half-past too damn early when the alarm goes off. He takes a few minutes to lie still under the blanket, taking a mental inventory of all the places that hurt and the ones that just twinge and the ones that are still, for the moment anyway, getting old quietly and peacefully. Considerate of them. He appreciates that.

Then it's on his feet, to the shower, wash himself awake. Good-enough clothes, then to the kitchen for coffee, maybe toast except the bread went moldy when he wasn't looking. Just coffee, then. It doesn't come out burned or watery today, which means it's gonna be a good one. Prognostication by coffee pot. Good enough for him. He's a simple guy, ask anybody.

One last look around his kitchen, his beat-up little apartment that's seen better days, but then haven't they all? He still gets the idea, once in a while, that it would be nice to have somebody else around the place, someone who'd at least have the lights on when he gets home at the end of shift, maybe look up when he comes in the door. Less often than he used to, though; that's a younger man's dream, he's learned his lesson watching two or three dozen marriages come into the squad room and go out in a blaze of fuck-yous, including his own.

If he'd married a cop, on the other hand...if he'd married a _cop_...

It would've been just as hard, for a whole different set of reasons. Not something to waste any more time on.

Out the door and onto the sidewalk, breathe in that early-morning late-spring air, warm and a little too thick for his lungs, tasting like Baltimore. Good morning, Charm City, don't hit me too hard today.

The city sings, a faded old song in from a throat that's had better days, worn down to a moan and a growl. The city talks its talk, bluster and despair, trash and defiance, once in a while glory hallelujah. The city cries and he closes his ears against it, ain't any good going to come from crying, ain't nothing to be done.

He's here when he could have gone, he's here because this is _his_, his broken-up pavement, his dirty harbor water, his Sunday mornings and his urban renewal, one round after another, try and try again. That's his heart they keep hitting with adrenaline, trying to keep it going just a little bit longer. They're doing all right, Baltimore and him. At any rate, they'll both still be around at Christmas.

Department, squad room, those damn blue walls still something like a shock after all this time; it looks different in his head, when he closes his eyes. Looks like it did the first day he came in. Probably nobody ever sees it any other way than the first time, deep down inside. You're remade and reborn that day, the day you become a murder cop. Never the same again, never like you were before. And never different, never anybody else than you were on day one, not way down deep inside.

They send him out with the new kids, the _babies_, let him break 'em in and wear off their shine, and it's been a long damn time since anyone made a crack about keeping an eye on Lewis's partners so they don't take a walk off the pier, long enough that he almost wouldn't mind hearing the jokes again, just because it would prove that someone else remembered there being something to make cruel jokes about, someone else remembered old Steve Crosetti. Nobody left from back then. Kay Howard gone upstate, Gharty taking his pension, Barnfather and Gaffney nobody he would joke or reminisce with on a cold day in hell. Bayliss gone in the wind so long ago he was a ghost. Pembleton and Munch up in that other city, that uglier and sharper and meaner city, the one that won't cover her face and decay in quiet like Baltimore does. And the rest even more gone than that, dead and buried. Old acquaintance never to be forgot and never to be seen again.

Kellerman's out on the water somewhere. Sometimes he thinks he might go and find him, spot the man a beer. One way or another he never does. The water moves on and Baltimore moves on and he never does. Old Meldrick Lewis, he stays the same, he sits down at his desk every day and opens a file, and he's not getting any younger but he thinks he's getting sharper, cut down to edges as the rest is peeled away.

One file after another. One more case after another. Bodies and bodies and bodies, blood and bones and down to the ME, hollow eyes and tears and up to another doorstep, flashing his badge. None of 'em stand out anymore, no one face lingers in his head. He remembers Bayliss being haunted by Adena Watson from morning to night, first day to last. Thank Jesus he never had anything like that crawl into his head and hang on. Thank Jesus he's a different man than that.

Taking the new kids out to the scenes, showing them how it's done, sweeping sidewalks and gutters, looking and looking for the same old thing. Same as always. _If I can just find this thing, I can go home_, and most of the time he doesn't even know what he's looking for anymore. Answering questions, telling old stories, bullshitting over coffee and doughnuts and newspapers that don't read like they used to, except for the sports scores, those at least never change.

The kids step wrong and he does his best to push them back to right, or even pull 'em a little, grab 'em by the back of the neck and put the fear of God into them, what used to be the fear of Gee, a long damn time ago. He carries Luther Mahoney like a bad taste in his mouth, sour and stale and never washing away whatever he drinks, no matter how much. They don't get that, they _can't_ get that and he hopes most of them never will. Some of them are gonna, he can see that in their eyes, their arrogance, the ones who look and walk like that same kind of cocky bastard. Good luck to 'em.

It's not a bad day; one case that he can tell right from the get-go is never going to close, and one that's a slam-dunk with fingerprints at the scene and a name in the computer. They cancel each other out and leave the board at a nice neutral zero, one on each side. Doesn't look that way in ink, but he can read it differently by now, balance the scales in his head. He's still down by a hundred souls at least over the whole course of the years, but he's learned to take it day by day. Only way to keep from going crazy around here.

Home through those singing streets, quieter now, stretching and showing off their darker stripes as it turns into evening. He walks slow and looks around at it, left and right and up to the muddy blue-gray of the sky. He knows this walk home, can see what used to be under what is, layers of memory blurring with what he sees. Whatever changes, it's still his, still home, and he can't imagine he's ever going to walk out of here without looking back. He thinks this beautiful, rotten old city is going to break him some day, just like she made him, and that he might not be sorry when she does.

Home. The moldy bread's still on the counter, next to the pot of coffee gone cold and harsh, and he throws them both out, runs a sponge halfheartedly around the sink, squints at the clock and calls for delivery Chinese. There's a game on TV, a chance to get a jump on those sport scores in tomorrow's paper. Always kind of nice to know what you're going to read before you read it. Like seeing into the future.

He tries for a little extra temperance these days; his liver isn't getting any younger either, and they're on the early shift all damn week. Just one beer with dinner, then, one Natty Bo with his kung pao chicken and fried rice. And then one scotch after the game and before bed, standing in the kitchen and watching the streetlights reflect in off the refrigerator front.

He rolls the liquor around on his tongue, letting it sink in, wash away the taste of another day that feels longer than it has any right to do, since not a damn thing happened worth remembering. Of course, he feels just the same at the end of a bad day, or a genuinely fucked-up one. Maybe he has a second scotch, on those days. Just a little more to get that taste off his tongue. He's come to realize, or he's getting there, anyway, that it's all gonna come out in the wash and there's not that much difference between a good day or a bad one. Just keep on keeping on, keep checking in, keep moving forward and see what you get.

He spits in the sink. One thing or another. That's life, right there, one thing or another, and he switches off the light.


End file.
